Monday, November 28, 2011

MONDAY'S MENU {Keeping It Real} APPLE PIE


Oh man! What do you do when you promise your little girl that you can make an Apple Pie and as you get into the making you realize that you only have whole wheat?.....Well, you make a whole wheat crust, of course! 

Did you gag a little? 

Well, you shouldn't! I mean, if you can get past the fact that I am trying to get used to this crazy new oven that seems to have a mind of it's own and enjoys to burn the snot out of things if I decide to follow suggested cooking times....and other times it seems to take double the time to cook. What the heck?! It get a little annoying! Especially when you start craving the pie you can smell backing away, wheat crust or not. 

Then the timer goes off. 10 min less than the suggested cooking time, because I am trying to outsmart my oven. And this is what I find........


STINKING OVEN!! Look at what it did to my beautiful pie! I had even cut out cute little apples. It had such promise. 

Good thing I didn't care enough to throw a fit and toss it all. We ate the guts out of it and it was DELISH! Wheat crust and all! Seriously! Who woulda thunk?! 

Anywho....just an FYI. Monday's Menu is going to be taking on a whole new life....and it is all going to start going down on Your Life Uncommon. 

Here is the deal.......

I have a million cookbooks. Problem is, I tend to stick to my same old same old's. Why? Well, because I am the queen of good intentions and every time I think I am going to make a plan that includes new and adventurous recipes, I sit down and hammer out a menu of the stand-by's and vow to get creative the next time. Let's face it, life gets crazy busy and quicker and easier is better. However, now I have a problem. I am bored. I have stopped cooking because I realize that I NEED creativity in the kitchen. I NEED variety. So I have come up with a plan! 

I have chosen 3 of my cookbooks. I went through them page by page and wrote down the name and page number of every single recipe that I thought would appeal to my family, and because it is my family, it had to be dairy free....or easily converted to dairy free, and it had to be healthy. 

I looked at breads, sauces, soups, main courses, desserts & appetizers. If it was something we might like, it went on my list. 

From the list I had enough dinner recipes to fill a 90 day menu!! AWESOME! Almost every single night there is something new to try! I will really watch the amount that I make. I don't want to cook more than we need. Having leftovers for Ryan's lunch the next day is PERFECT, but no more than that, if possible. 
I also created a list of things to make for breakfasts, lunches & snacks. The list is AWESOME! 

Here is the plan, if we like it, I type the recipe up on the computer. If we don't it goes the way of the world. This requires total honesty at the dinner table. I mean, if they don't like it, great! It won't make the cookbook and it won't make the menu plan in the future. 

Everyday I will post the recipes with a picture and a short review on YLU. This way I can share some fabulous recipes and our experiment with you! 

The entire purpose to all of this madness is that I REALLY want to get a meal plan down. I would like to create 4 thirty day meal plans. The meal plan will be repeated 3 months in a row, and they will be season appropriate. There will be a few day on each menu that will be "try a new recipe" days, just to keep it fun. My purpose in all of this is to get going on our food storage. If I know that I use 6 cans of black beans in 1 month with a certain menu, then I will watch for them to go on sale and buy 18 cans. That gives me a 3 month supply. If I don't use black beans any other time during the year, then it is my year supply. Then in the future if I see a sale on black bean, I check my stash. If I have less than 18 cans, I buy the amount needed to replenish. Make sense? It's certainly a starting place, and to me, it makes food storage seem SO much less daunting. 

Anyway, I will post a link to the daily recipe up in the right hand corner under the "Today on YLU" link! 

It gets started on Wednesday and there are some GOODIES ahead! Join me over there for some fun things you may want to add to your menu! 

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